urred within parameters which altered remarkably little, and just as circumstances displayed a tendency to recur, so similar circumstances tended to call forth similar responses.The rising tide of writings on economic matters that flowed through the course of the seventeenth century is usually held to mark a leap forward in the evolution of economic thought, and the period has been credited with both `the birth of political economy' as a discipline and the creation of a new economic system, which Adam Smith named the `mercantile system'.(7) Discussions of the role of labour assumed ever more prominence in the burgeoning economic literature as the seventeenth century wore on, and after mid-century a distinct change of emphasis was evident in the views which were propounded. In place of concern with an excess of people, with the creation of employment, with the control of hoards of `masterless men' and with facilitating emigration, came a desire for a higher population, for restraints to be placed on emigration and the level of wages and, above all, for the means to ensure that the poor adhered to their customary role in society and fulfilled their duty to labour diligently.(8)The volume and coherence of the writings on these subjects, and the broad uniformity of the views which their authors expressed, has led to a belief that in the later seventeenth century a new and distinctive `mercantilist' theory of labour was formulated, which stressed the `utility of poverty' by holding that `the wealth of the country [was] based on the poverty of the majority of its subjects'.(9) Starting from what are commonly held to be false premises, such doctrines proceeded by a series of seemingly logical steps to advocate the manifold benefits of low wages for the nation, whereby workmen would be compelled to be industrious, the costs of production would be suppressed and the resultant cheapness of English commodities would boost both the balance of trade...
